Words and Nerds: Authors, books and literature.

New intro to the podcast with music created by Christopher Dickers, the soundtrack originally created for Ben Hobson's Snake Island. Also featured on the intro are authors Trent Dalton, Elliot Perlman, Jack Heath, Megan Goldin, Tristan Bancks, Alex Miles, Ben Hobson & Mick Elliot.

Corey White was a golden child. He knew this because his father would hit his mother and his sisters but not him. And his mother adored him so much she let him drop out of primary school.

After losing his father to jail and his mother to heroin, though, he became a target for cruelty and dysfunction in foster homes. A scholarship to a prestigious boarding school lifted him out of foster care and awakened a love of learning and reading for him, but this was soon overwhelmed by a crushing depression and drug addiction.

Through it all, he kept thinking – sometimes hoping, sometimes fearing – that he was destined for something bigger. Would he find salvation in the halls of a university, or a poetically grimy crack den, or through love? Or would the golden glow that had been in him since childhood ultimately fade, leaving only darkness and ruin?

The Prettiest Horse in the Glue Factory is a memoir of trauma and survival that will break your heart and then show you how to rebuild it. It is a powerful, lyrical and darkly funny debut from one of Australia’s brightest young comedians.

‘Equal parts hilarious and horrifying, Corey’s story is one of the most powerful I have ever read.’ Wil Anderson

‘Look back in anger. Look around in acceptance. Look forward in love. Harrowing, and yet hopeful.’ Tim Rogers

Moving between Imperial China and France during the ‘Terror’ of the French Revolution and inspired by the true story of the quest for a blood-red rose.

Viviane de Faitaud has grown up alone at the Chateau de Belisama-sur-le-Lac in Brittany, for her father, the Marquis de Ravoisier, lives at the court of Louis XVI in Versailles. After a hailstorm destroys the chateau’s orchards, gardens and fields an ambitious young Welshman, David Stronach, accepts the commission to plan the chateau’s new gardens in the hope of making his name as a landscape designer.

David and Viviane fall in love, but it is an impossible romance. Her father has betrothed her to a rich duke who she is forced to marry and David is hunted from the property. Viviane goes to court and becomes a maid-in-waiting to Marie-Antoinette and a member of the extended royal family. Angry and embittered, David sails away from England with Lord Macartney, the British ambassador, who hopes to open up trade with Imperial China.

In Canton, the British embassy at last receives news from home, including their first reports of the French Revolution. David hears the story of ‘The Blue Rose’, a Chinese fable of impossible love, and discovers the blood-red rose growing in the wintry garden. He realises that he is still in love with Viviane and must find her.

Viviane escapes the guillotine and returns to the ruin of Chateau de Belisima to rebuild her life. David carrying a cluster of rosehips finds her there, and together they decide to grow the fabled red rose of China in France.

117. Ben Hobson: Snake Island, book soundtrack & morality by Words and Nerds: Authors, books and literature.

A schoolgirl and her uncle and his boyfriend have two weeks to solve a murder in a small town style forgot…

‘Funny, dark and above all, heart-warming, The Nancys is a celebration of what’s important in life - which is family, friendship and also: makeovers. R.W.R. McDonald’s novel is face-paced, clever and full of wit and repartee. McDonald pays homage to the novel’s namesake Nancy Drew, but adds elements of RuPaul and Shirley Barrett’s The Bus on Thursday. The result is a work of fiction that is smart, darkly comic and, in the very best of ways, completely bizarre.' - Katherine Collette, author of The Helpline

'A delight - moving and hilarious. I loved every minute I spent with these characters.' - Paddy O'Reilly

'How does The Nancys manage to be both sharp and blackly funny, but also uplifting and sweet?' - Toni Jordan

Tippy Chan is eleven and lives in a small town in a very quiet part of the world - the place her Uncle Pike escaped from the first chance he got as a teenager. Now Pike is back with his new boyfriend Devon to look after Tippy while her mum's on a cruise.

Tippy is in love with her uncle's old Nancy Drew books, especially the early ones where Nancy was sixteen and did whatever she wanted. She wants to be Nancy and is desperate to solve a real mystery. When her teacher's body is found beside Riverstone's only traffic light, Tippy's moment has arrived. She and her minders form The Nancys, a secret amateur detective club.

But what starts as a bonding and sightseeing adventure quickly morphs into something far more dangerous. A wrongful arrest, a close call with the murderer, and an intervention from Tippy's mum all conspire against The Nancys. But regardless of their own safety, and despite the constant distraction of questionable fashion choices in the town that style forgot, The Nancys know only they can stop the killer from striking again.

The Nancys is gripping and glorious, a heart-warming novel for anyone who's ever felt they were on the outside looking in. At its heart it is about the family we make and how we must summon the courage to face the truth, no matter what the cost may be.

My hand, which is following a stray pencil rolling across the floor, stops dead right in front of two ratty green sneakers.

My gaze follows the shoes up over long legs to a towering figure.

I stand abruptly.

Tall, black eyes, messy hair, a permanent scowl on a permanently angry face. Our school's delinquent, a waster, the kind of boy who always sits at the back of class.

The kind of boy even popular people like Sophia are afraid of.

Teddy Taualai.

Alice Dyson knows exactly how she'll be spending her final year of high school: with her head down, concentrating on her textbooks and homework. She's focused on the future, and nothing is going to get in her way.

Until a bizarre encounter with the school's most notorious troublemaker derails all her plans, turning Alice into the unwilling centre of attention and her life into one enormous complication.

And even worse? Now Teddy Taualai won't leave her alone.

A romantic story about rumours, friendship, and discovering who you really are.

Shortlisted for the 2018 Adelaide Festival Unpublished Manuscript Award

Shortlisted for the Readings Young Adult Book Prize 2019

A funny book about growing up in a family with two mums inspired by Gus Skattebol-James' story in the award-winning documentary, Gayby Baby.

I love wrestling. When I grow up, I want to be just like my wrestling heroes: big and tough, with really huge muscles. The only problem is, my mums don't like fighting...

A funny story about identity, family and dressing up, inspired by the award-winning documentary, Gayby Baby.

'Big hearted, bold and beautiful. For any parent who knows there is no "right way" to make a family, and for any kid who knows there is no "right way" to be yourself.' Ben Law, author of The Family Law

Maya Newell grew up with two mums in a little cottage in the Inner West of Sydney. Every year, they would dress up and march in the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras - in her family, the parade was better than Christmas! From a young age knew she wanted to be a storyteller. She picked up a camera and realised this was the tool she could use to show (not tell) beautiful and bold tales that could open up new worlds to the masses who were blind-hearted.

Charlotte Mars is from the Blue Mountains and her childhood was spent creating imaginary worlds in the bush. It was not unexpected that those imaginary worlds would one day inspire her to write and make films of her own. Even now, Charlotte still dips into them, and can often be found getting lost in her head and talking to herself. Some days she feels like a woman, some days she doesn't, so Charlotte loves stories that speak to gender diverse identities and experiences.

Maya and Charlotte spent 8 years making a film about the experiences of children in same-sex attracted families, Gayby Baby. To get the film and its messages out there in the world, Maya and Charlotte did all kinds of funny things - they once crashed a TV talk show, another time they staked-out a morning news show to try and get on air, and one time they made a live video from a rollercoaster! Even when fighting for important issues, they always try to have fun. They also took the film, and a group of Gaybies, to share stories and discuss policy with our nation's leaders at state and federal parliaments.

One of the kids they followed around for 3 years making Gayby Baby, is their co-author, Gus Skattebol-James. These days, Gus isn't obsessed with wrestling, but he is a black belt in Aikido (a Japanese martial art) and is mad about skateboarding. Now that Gus is almost a grown up, he is finishing his HSC exams and next year he wants to travel the world.

Tom Jellett has illustrated a number of books for children including Whale in the Bath by Kylie Westaway, The Gobbledygook is Eating a Book by Justine Clarke and Arthur Baysting, and My Dad Thinks He's Funny by Katrina Germein. Tom has also been included in the Editorial and Book category for Illustrators 53 and exhibited at the Society of Illustrators, New York in 2011 and 2013.

113. Meg Caddy: Devil's Ballast, pirates and women at sea. by Words and Nerds: Authors, books and literature.

Gavin Aung Than is a cartoonist based in Perth, Australia. After working in the corporate graphic design industry for 8 years he quit his unfulfilling job at the end of 2011 to focus on his true passion, drawing cartoons. Gavin launched Zen Pencils at the start of 2012, a cartoon blog which adapts inspirational quotes into comic stories, and hasn’t looked back.

Superheroes have it easy. They don't have to clean their secret headquarters, wash the alien bloodstains out of their costumes or be responsible for taking Super Mutt out for a walk. No, they leave all that for their sidekicks like me, while they get all the credit!

I'm Junior Justice, but you can call me JJ, and I think it's time we made our own team.

The Super Sidekicks!

Are you with me?

Being a superhero sidekick isn't as fun as you think. You do all the work, beat the bad guys and save the planet, only for your grown-up partner to get all the credit. Junior Justice is sick of it, so he and his sidekick pals, Flygirl, Dinomite and Goo, have decided to form their own super team.

But before they can start saving the world they'll have to prove to the adult heroes that they're more than just sidekicks. And once the evil Dr Enok discovers his favourite pet Goo has left him to join a super team, the world might need saving sooner rather than later!

Tristan Bancks tells stories for the page and screen. His books for kids and teens include Two Wolves, The Fall and the Tom Weekly series. Two Wolves won Honour Book in the 2015 Children’s Book Council of Australia Awards and was shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards. It also won the YABBA and KOALA Children’s Choice Awards, as did his latest thriller, The Fall, a CBCA Notable book. Detention, a gripping new novel about a daring escape and a lockdown in a school, is out July 2019.

A DARING ESCAPE

A SCHOOL LOCKDOWN

A THRILLING CHASE

WHAT WOULD YOU RISK TO SAVE A LIFE?

Sima and her family are pressed to the rough, cold ground among fifty others. They lie next to the tall fence designed to keep them in. The wires are cut one by one.

When they make their escape, a guard raises the alarm. Shouting, smoke bombs, people tackled to the ground. In the chaos Sima loses her parents.

Dad told her to run, so she does, hiding in a school and triggering a lockdown. A boy, Dan, finds her hiding in the toilet block.

What should he do? Help her? Dob her in? She’s breaking the law, but is it right to lock kids up? And if he helps, should Sima trust him? Or run?

This moment, these decisions, will change their lives.